In mass production, preferably of small objects such as occurs in the automobile industry, conveyors are used to an increasing extent for moving the objects between different assembly or processing stations. A conveyor system of the kind in question is very flexible and has, inter alia, the advantage that the station may be arranged in the manufacturing facility without necessarily being dedicated to a discontinuously operating, usually straight-line conveyor, as with a so-called transfer line. These flexible conveyors have a continuously moving conveying means which can be guided rectilinearly and in curves for reaching the stations in question, and after a given assembly operation or processing they move the object further to the next station. The conveying means may be of the flexible link type, which is guided in a trough defined by vertical side walls. The objects are glidably supported on the conveying means either directly or by means of carriers or pallets, which in turn are effectively supported on the conveying means and are guided in the trough forming part of the conveyor. The conveying means and the carriers, or their supporting surfaces if the carriers are carried thereby, are made from material providing sufficient friction for the object to accompany the movement of the conveying means, while allowing gliding movement on the conveying means without excessive loss of power when the carrier and its objects are stationary. When the carrier or pallet arrives at a station, stops are triggered which stop the carrier and maintain it in a desired position for a working operation on the object. The object is retained on the carrier with clamping means or the like appropriate to the purpose.
In many cases the conveying means has relatively high velocity, in certain cases up to 70 meters per minute or more. Since there are difficulties in practice with regard to coordinating the processing time at each station so that each carrier is kept exactly the same length of time in each station, certain variations in the conveying flow of objects may result in that one or more carriers may collect behind a stationary carrier at a particular station. The following carrier or carriers must then be arrested while awaiting their turn for processing in the station in question. In such case, a carrier should not directly strike, with high velocity a stationary carrier having its objects processed, since this could detrimentally affect the processing carried out at the station. The following carrier should therefore be braked so that a problematic shock reaction is avoided. To minimize such shock reaction it is known to simply provide the carriers with rubber buffers. Such an arrangement is however not sufficient for damping the shock between the carriers. Also, for chain conveyors provided with link rollers it is known to arrange special friction bands for braking the link rollers.
These known arrangements are however, not satisfactory or they require a conveyor having a special and complicated implementation.